Liberation and its Constraints: A Philosophical Analysis of Key Issues in Psychiatry

Steven Bindeman

Abstract

There can be no question that we are living in a post-Husserlian and post-Freudian world. Their modernist dream, consistent with Enlightenment ideals, was to create a perfectible science of consciousness that would ultimately have the power to liberate people from their confused and conflicted selves. But we can’t seem to get past the distortions that surround us. We are incessantly exposed to all sorts of images containing signifiers that we are unable to ignore. If in consequence we tend to internalize and become consumed by an increasingly large number of signified impressions that are uncontrollable and insatiable, then the limits of any science of consciousness become increasingly clear, and the insights made possible by hermeneutical interpretation must be included in our ongoing efforts to liberate ourselves from them.